One Summer Night

This story was written for The Story Spinner contest.

The prompts: It must take place under a tree. It must start with the line, "He always seems to have a bone to pick...". It must contain the words/phrases: plastic, cherry, hot dogs, can of worms.

One Summer Night

He always seems to have a bone to pick with one kid or another, Ross thought as he helped Elvin dig up their time capsule from under the tree. They had buried the plastic lunch box filled with precious loot about a month ago. The buried treasure had been the brainchild of Stump, an unfortunately short and rather obese member of their neighborhood group of twelve-year-old boys. As the brains of the outfit, Stump theorized that if they buried some of their stuff now, it would be worth a lot of money when they dug it up at the end of the summer. He had read that things like action figures and comic books were worth more if they were old.

Recently, Stump had somehow gotten on the bad side of Elvin. The result was that Elvin wanted to move the time capsule and “leave Shorty out of the loop.” Elvin thought this was great fun, laughing out loud as he pictured the look on Stump's face when, at the end of summer vacation, they dug under the tree only to find nothing was there. Ross and Echo, the fourth and final member of their group, were sworn to secrecy.

After a few minutes, Ross said, “It seems like we are digging a lot deeper than we need to. Didn’t we bury this closer to the surface?”

Echo piped in with, “Yeah. Didn’t we bury it closer to the surface?”

Elvin ignored the last comment. The only thing noteworthy to come out of Echo’s mouth was the occasional original thought. Everything else was just a restatement of what everyone else was saying. It was weird but all the boys had grown accustomed to it over the years.

“I think you are right. You know what I think?” asked Elvin, suddenly standing up and looking around. “I think that little prick came over and dug this up before we could. I bet he is watching and laughing at us right now.”

Everyone stood up quickly and looked around, certain that Elvin was right. All felt suddenly indignant that Stump had done something so mean to them; ignoring the fact that this is exactly what they had intended to do to him.

“Come on. Let’s fill this hole up and go find that little traitor.” Elvin was acting a little weird. Sure, he was really pissed off, but he also seemed a little nervous. That’s the way it was with him. It was like there were two or three people inside his adolescent head; none of them up to any good.

Ross started to throw back a shovel full of dirt when something at the bottom of the hole caught his eye. He bent over to get a better look.

“What are you doing? Let’s get this hole filled up so we can go get Stump.” Elvin had little patience for disobedience. His eyes darted around nervously. He was acting strange, even for Elvin.

Ross often wondered why they even hung around with him. It was like sitting in the back seat of a car driving down the freeway with no driver; sooner or later, bad things were bound to happen. Right now though, Ross’ mind was on whatever it was down in that hole.

“I think I see something down there.”

“He thinks he sees something down there,” contributed Echo.

“It looks like the end of a hot dog or something.” Ross started to clear away some of the dirt with his hand. He suddenly jumped up and stepped back from the hole. His face had lost all color. A moment later, he turned and vomited violently.

Elvin smiled. He would be able to tease Ross about this later. For now, he wanted to see what had caused such an impact on the other boy.

Looking down into the hole, he could see the pink end of what did, in fact, look like a thin hot dog. He reached down to pull on it. That was when the reality of what he was seeing hit him.

“It’s a finger.” Echo beat them all to the punch with his declaration.

“No way!” Elvin lit up with excitement. This was right up there on his list of things he found to be cool. They had found a finger and with any luck, there was a body attached to the end of it.

“We had better call the cops or tell our parents or something!” Ross said, knowing it wouldn’t happen that way. He could see it in Elvin’s eyes. He wanted to dig up something gruesome. It was part of his spookiness. He had always had this fascination with dead things. When they were little, it was dead bugs; later dead cats and such. Ross thought it strange that Elvin, out of all the kids in the neighborhood, seemed to be the one to stumble upon one carcass after another.

Now, staring down at the finger poking up out of the bottom of the hole, the excitement grew in Elvin’s eyes in a way that made Ross feel somehow wary. It was as if he had opened up a can of worms better left untouched. Now, no matter what happened next, he would be at least a little guilty by association.

One moment, Elvin was leaning over the hole, scooping dirt away from the finger, the next, he was pushing dirt back in, as if he wanted to cover everything back up.

“Elvin, what are you doing? We need to tell someone about this!”

“Yeah, we need to tell someone.” Echo began to pace back and forth quickly.

Elvin snapped around to confront the two smaller boys. “Look you two. There is nothing down there. I had a good look and it was just a root. Help me cover this hole back up. I have some cherry bombs. We can go over to the Johnson’s place and scare their cows.

The two smaller boys looked at each other before shrugging and pitching in to help. What could they do? If Elvin said it was a root, it was a root. They were certainly not going to challenge him.

Later that night, Ross and Echo sneaked out of Ross’ house where the two boys were having a sleepover. They made their way through the quiet street of their town, eventually reaching the edge of the field. In the light of the full moon, it was easy to make out the outline of the tree they had been digging under earlier that day.

Without Elvin around, there was no one to keep them from digging the hole again. They were certain that they had seen a finger, not a root. As they sneaked across the filed, Echo made an uncharacteristically unique, albeit brief, comment.

“Wait!” he whispered, holding up his hand.

The two boys dropped to the ground. Peeking up over the tall grass, they could see the outline of someone. Whoever it was seemed to be hard at word digging underneath their tree.

It took all the courage they could manage, but the two boys crawled forward slowly to get a better look. Soon, they were within twenty yards or so. The person was bent over something and pulling hard. It was as if they were trying to get something really heavy out of the hole.

A barking dog caused the digger to turn suddenly. It was Elvin! His face could be seen clearly in the bright moon light. Later, the boys would claim that they could even see the wildness in his eyes.

Quietly, the boys made their way backwards, out of the field. An anonymous call from them soon had the neighborhood ringing with the sound of midnight sirens. The boys watched from their hiding place at the edge of the field; well out of incriminating territory.

The cops took Elvin away, although several of the cars stayed behind for quite some time.

Stump's picture made headlines the next day. Local Boy Found Buried in Field it had read.

As for Elvin, he was never seen or heard from again. Ross and Echo never talked about that night. They would stay in touch and share family photos and such but Elvin and Stump were never referred to again.

That suited Ross just fine. As for Echo, he silently agreed.

Word count 1388